The political hypocrisy, the hope, the misery, the mystery

I can't say that I can't believe we are here again, because I always thought it was a possibility for the past almost decade. Yet while I'm not in denial it's the knowing of we are all going to get what's coming, in some form besides an equivalent of a handful of elite vultures compared to everyone else. I think there will be denial amongst the believers until the very end and the rewriting of history. In Trump's first term I remember a journalist on twitter writing it would be like the alternate history of the confederacy that occurred. The person I fear most for the most damage will be RFK Jr. In case you need a reason to not sleep at night, raise your blood pressure, the excuse to break free to run away off the grid, or punch a hole in the wall you can look at the hateful stupid dystopia simmering in the CDC's Facebook comments in two recent posts. One about the bird flu and another about Covid. 

I truly believe in caring for one another and community and fighting for others as my political philosophy, however you do have to be realistic in protecting yourself from others or filtering the harm they can cause in your life. To save yourself as a human being. You must care for yourself because...well you've seen it and lived it and others have for centuries, people are a hypocritical mess. We are in a radicalized time though not sure many people will understand what that will look like (or get what's actually going on) when the people who are going to be in power very soon go to smash and recreate this place in what can be described as darkness. Who will be the fighters against the visions, the collaborators, the people who will pretend nothing is really too different, the people who tell you to keep your head down and mouth shut. The predictable ones who will say it's all part of a greater plan to make so and so great again and you are actually the enemy questioning. Who will be the ones that when it clicks what is taking place 'oh this isn't what I signed up for' or 'Wait what's going on?  and what will they do? People think hate won this election when it was apathy and inertia as the larger aspect. However what will the narrative be going forward because the other side believe they have won the war and the fun for them is about to get started.

To untangle and fight against the monstrosity ahead you must believe something inside you is worth preserving. No one else can do that for us. Otherwise if you feel insignificant (you still have to pull at something inside yourself and connect to it or you will psychologically die) you must also believe their is something about people, about humanity, our collective wellbeing worthwhile, whatever scrap. Whatever yearning, hope, or memory. Whatever thing or object. The water, the insects, the planet, books, a cat that needs your attention, the clouds, music, food you are making for dinner for a loved one, art, the plant that needs to be watered in the windowsill, that is worth surviving and fighting for. No one can decide what that is for you, you may only realize once you think or feel it out and the spark hits. At least I'm not looking to go down in apathy. I've lived once upon a time in what seemed to be a never ending stream of suicidal ideations for many years. It's been so long that I don't remember that person much but I know I survived.

I mean I'm no prophet or hero yet fuck fear. We live here too.

The Failure, Fear, And Frenzy around Luigi Mangione

A woman's body is never one's own business. So we are taught. God forbid a state of possible pregnancy, pregnancy, disability, fatness, sickness, transness, wearing sweats, femininity, make-up free aging. Growing up where everyone is staring and growing old and everyone turns away. Your body is policed from society, community, and your own internal voice you've been programmed into. As long as you have doubts about your physical presence that can keep you down from trying to have some self determination, confidence and freedom right? 

I saw a tweet yesterday about how we had this era of women and now it is the time of men. Yeah no. The world does not run without us. The labor economy (physical and the uncompensated emotional labor to get people through the day) would collapse without our participation. The world would cease to function. Now the OP was trying to say this not from a celebratory reactionary framework but out of fear. And yes there is much to fear. Anyone telling you that is overblown or isn't especially true for women now is a fool, in denial or dangerous. But we're here. The powers that be and those happy to try and control us will be on a tear cheering our unhappiness, torture and demise but ultimately it's a fight never to be won. We are too important. That's why they hate us, want us, desire and fear us. We exist outside of what men have and they know it. They will never forgive that we are not trapped in the spiderweb of 24/7 first person patriarchal crisis and a fatality lens killing them. Like a Being John Malkovich situation. I mean you see some of how they post online and act in person. Read first person accounts throughout history and fictional depictions. Absorb family stories, friendships' and lovers' confessions and after all this evidence does that seem like a segment of people who overall are having a good time? Some are, I don't mean to position them as all helpless victims without agency, without an unfortunate amount who do hope to victimize others because of their desire to control women. And if they can't dominate they would rather hurt and maybe kill them. You will be called a man hater but statistics and experience are our greatest strength and knowledge.

I don't want men's hierarchal and domineering mindset. I don't want their rage, despair and paranoia and the madness they posses of not knowing themselves. To summarize while men have societal advantages and privileges (though those can shift around and not a one and done and across the board for all men) I think men have a shitshow. I don't look on enviously and think 'Wow look at them they got such a good deal!' With high rates of violence physically and psychologically inflicted on those they know and violence inflicted internally that many times ends in suicide, I'm not sure that's the equality or freedom women should be looking for. There are many challenges being a woman but I wouldn't trade this, not for anything. There is mental freedom from knowing I don't have these burdens that eat men alive and drive many of them in shame to live being never truly close to anyone. A panic reflex toward self reflection if that meant changing anything and a paralysis to be vulnerable and open even if it means survival. They'd rather die quietly inside. I want a better life than that existence. People deserve a better life than that finality.

Imagine being so cruel and miserable you still go into the Parkland survivors social media pages to harass them and tell them they are stupid for not wanting to die by gun violence? Which they wanted to advocate for because they survived a mass shooting at their school. Imagine being a fucking loser and low life like that? Imagine that these people are all around us? I know Hogg has talked about attempts on his life through swatting. That hyena conspiracy cabbage patch congresswoman followed him and made thinly veiled threats that she had a gun in her bag. But the right can get away with just about anything and get elected and rewarded. 

It reminds me of someone I was friends with when I was younger whom I immediately unfollowed from a volatile post they made against the Parkland kids  early on when the protests occurred. Written as one of those first person social media outbursts we all see, that most of us have done toward someone who would never hear us back. The wording was brief but its tone was as if this person had been in the room with the Parkland kids, being cornered with them and they were demanding for the person to hand their gun over. 

I hate being reminded of all the cruelty we know of people around us, in our orbit and those we care for. That no matter our concern and affection for the people we are attached to who are this way, it will not be an elixir as much as we don't want to believe that. It took me many years and many people I felt I lost and did lose to finally accept that. All the hateful people we don't know that we know. 

I think to hang on to so much psychological attachment to a gun as some of these people do, there must be an intense fear of death and the inevitability of it. That it's not merely some macho posturing but life terrifies you deep down every day, yet you are afraid of death even more. You're going to fight against every second, every breath, every inch of this inescapable reality. And no one is going to get in your way for your right to kill someone and anyone out of this fear of death manifested. You get to be the killer before death comes knocking on your door one day. 

All the hateful people, all the rage full ones, and all the fearful and tired ones that our love can't heal or do anything about this specific electric current inside them that keeps their souls haunted.

How real and pure.

You see it right? Come on people get to work on a play and screenplay for her. I see it in my head, please let her be who she wants, whose been waiting to come out and birthed. Oh my god I just thought of a great pairing with someone else who needed to escape (and did) to find who she was meant to be as actress after years being caged, Elizabeth Olsen. If that town cared more about Criterion and TCM than Marvel and Disney, what beauty we could all experience or at least some worthwhile experiments.

😭

I mean I don't have any answers or people I know who could even influence what my sentiments are but we can't lose the youth to fascism that's malpractice and inexcusable. How many voted? How many sat out, how many switched? How many are you going to see pass by and let the future fall out of all our fucking grasping hands? The kids that were getting beaten by police during Floyd protests? The kids sympathizing and angry for the annihilation of Gaza? Those being dragged away in protests because they have come to believe for liberation of a people the world refused to stand up for, for decades, by seeing a genocide from their phones that everyone positions they are poisoned and deadened by and mindless and brainless all is lost? The youth who actually know what capitalism is and can see the world through social media that the ruling powers don't care for them, won't do shit for climate? 

They know deep down they were abandoned during the greatest health crisis in a 100 years by government, corporations and community, no matter what these media people crying about some fake lockdown and masks that never came to be doing massive brain damage. Letting present history get rewritten in real time I'm tired of that. This youth that had such a high acceptance of LGBTQ than any other time period and we are suppose to just forget all of that? You're going to throw them away to be cogs in the machine and be at behest of fascists roaming the digital landscape? Once again Andrew Tate and trad wife TikTok are not stronger than you as a people who know young people to help out and influence in the long run in your fucking lives. Stop positioning these cultural trends and figureheads as invincible villains and inevitabilities. Culture is malleable and ever changing. The past decade has shown that average people are bendable, they can change or they can sit out. I'm not sure if anyone will learn though. You may lose but you will always lose if you rescind in advance.

I will always hate Biden for running again and letting Trump able to get back in, though I will hate him for Gaza most of all because when you see the images and videos out of Gaza they should make a rational and reasonable person never to stop wanting to (redacted) him and his monstrous foreign policy team. You know like Anthony Bourdain said about Kissinger type sentiment. By the way Bourdain was a huge supporter of Palestinians and did a beautiful segment on them. 

We are too trained to give passes to those in power because we are conditioned to believe we could be those people in power who are put in a position to make "difficult" decisions because hypothetically in this fantasy there is no black and white lines only grey. And that is what they sell us and plenty of people have been buying it without a second thought for centuries.

Besides my anger at Biden, I will always have some anger at Dem primary 2020 voters and yet that anger may be surpassed if the early polling appetite for Harris to be nominee in 2028, can you fucking imagine? People say it's too early but we have to test the waters to expose the ugliness and stupidity to have any chance to try and stop such a disastrous decision. 

Who knows what elections will look like in four years, though the Republicans will want to have some of them because they'd like to grab some more power even if Trump would like to get rid of elections altogether and crown himself king. However on top of this possible nightmare of Harris as nominee, we in PA have to contend with the morally grotesque Democrat asshole in this senate seat that is at risk now. Will people choose fear over rational and pick Harris as some political revenge fantasy? The Democratic primary voters did something similar with Biden, though that was comfort over change. Aka 'Not Bernie we need to be pragmatic!'

It really has to be someone on the outside of sorts not really thought of yet. Too bad about Walz. 

Another few weeks till the cheerleading pain dial becomes president. A decade of this bullshit worse than before. He's already starting by trying to shut down the government before he can even begin his smash and grab administration.

😞 

I am so disturbed all these photographers excited about Generative AI and people trying to hype back up NFTs? Artists can't resist the destruction of the planet and society's well-being if it takes away from a shiny tool they want to do whatever they want with because they believe in individualism and freedom of self-expression at the expense of everyone and everything else. What a rot that has formed among photographers and artists. Bleak for the future.

 

Something that is misguided from very well meaning liberal/progressive/left/pro choice people who comment that it's men who are wanting rules & laws to force women & girls into giving birth, is that some of the most active & hardcore voices in the forced birth movement are & have been women

Also to note while people who aren't women can go through pregnancy, the forced birth movement is not interested in ALL people giving birth. Over time this will become more apparent as they attempt to police, surveillance & restrict the "undesirables" from reproducing.

Already happens to disabled people but will be broadened as the blanket terminology of who the "undesirables" & "unfit" are that we need to get a handle on & control spreads in mainstream discourse. Attempts will be made to make this language & goal acceptable & palpable to the public. 

What will be the response when in the past few years in this Covid world so many have been thrown away & cast out to the wolves at the mercy of government neglect, business exploitation, & other's personal comfort? I'm unfortunately skeptical because of the left's mass failure to confront this.

If reproductive care & abortion rights which is self determination & liberation of the self & from systems to weigh down & exploit are seen as a side issues or 'it's matter of fact but don't need to write articles about it in our leftist publications, leave that to the annoying liberal platforms'Then what are we even doing? Also if wearing a mask is so difficult or seen as a side issue, what will possibly be this mass radical arrangement of coming together look like in real practice not just our wildest dreams & hopeful imaginations?

So does anyone else find it curious how Google has been dismantling information off it's search engines for past couple years (and if you haven't been paying attention it's undeniable now) and wondering what are they doing? Pour a glass of water out for every time you type in the Google search engine because the Generative AI that pops out unprompted is destroying our home (the planet, though no one should own the internet). Why do they want to take away the enjoyment of the internet from us? Is it just the Neo-liberalism? The tech fash vultures won't let the peasants have fun and free information and communication. It's eerily a perfect storm of an opportunity for an authoritarian government to take advantage of. Wow almost got worried there for a moment. I'm glad the American public has such a vast number of highly politically engaged and critically thinking and most of all thoughtful individuals. Whom are interested and invested in not only an abstract idea but the actual practice of collective wellbeing for society and one another, that they would never let an awful reality like that befall them. I'm so ever thankful we haven't had any recent consequential elections to put this to the test...

 

"theory's cool, but theory with no practice ain't shit." -Fred Hampton

IF I MUST DIE

 

If I must die, 

you must live 

to tell my story 

to sell my things 

to buy a piece of cloth 

and some strings, 

(make it white with a long tail) 

so that a child, somewhere in Gaza 

while looking heaven in the eye 

awaiting his dad who left in a blaze— 

and bid no one farewell 

not even to his flesh 

not even to himself— 

sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above 

and thinks for a moment an angel is there 

bringing back love 

If I must die 

let it bring hope 

let it be a tale

- Refaat Alareer

For a brief moment in the universe a man who lived to make millions of dollars in profit for himself and assist the healthcare industry in their daily manifestations to consistently and unapologetically bring harm and suffering to those in need, to those sick, to those disabled, to those desperate, to those destitute, to those who felt suffering was all there was left in this life, experienced a rare occurrence. Karma.

Glad to be vindicated of my read on the big dummy conspiracy brained podcaster. Never trust those who would remain friends with Alex Jones and promote them on their large platforms. What's going on now, with new enthusiastic support even rewriting their own personal history is also a business and money decision we are not privy to with his dealings with Musk and Thiel, *Dana White.* Working toward long term investments and influence. While was already on the reactionary railway for past few years, ever since the Spotify contract he has jumped quite a bit. You think with that long term exposure, history and posting it's all coincidence with how trained he is in media and entertainment? With all the people paid in his orbit? He's a big dummy but not that big a one. You have to be smarter this isn't your friend hanging out on the couch getting high with. You are nothing but audience and money. So those who hope to analyze him for some post election take away or political insights won't have any luck. Go talk to the young men kids lugging the grocery shopping carts around to bring back into the store. An important, sincere conversation and connection with you will be more lasting and impactful politically than these young men on their own trying to recall what the podcast dummy said on his 2 months back in a haze.

*(Dec. 15, 2024) How could I have missed this? The connection to one of Trump biggest supporters Dana White whom Rogan has had a very long and money making friendship with. Makes even better sense than Musk connection. I wonder the scheme is probably some bullshit wellness and health related scamming with crypto. 

 

There is no class first for women if there is no bodily anatomy with reproductive choices. There is no level playing field without self determination for women and others to have choices over their reproductive lives. I don’t understand how leftist women with a class first lens can’t see it. Why is abortion rights a sort of accessory trinket issue to some of you? If you think this some boutique brunch white Democrat liberal after thought you don't have it in you. Grow some skin and spine. Sharpen your teeth and nails. We are on the menu and you don't have a plan to not let us boil in their pot.

"We ought to just chill out for a while."

 

In case you're wondering about DNC elites possessing self refection. From the one of the handful of people who led us into this moment with his consequential decisions of the past four and a half years of Biden and Harris picks.

Remember when he said 'Maybe we're meant to go into authoritarianism' a couple years ago? I never forget.

 

I refuse to live quietly in a world where these freaks believe they hold destiny over us. 

Get out of our way. Our body, our choice forever.

America has a lot of tragedy up it’s sleeve

I see optimism of the flood of new and wrong info that did not correlate to my past writings that she could lose that there was an eerie sense and while I saw signs on the roadways when got back they did not materialize so much on lawns clouded me on my last post back there. One long street that had a bunch of Biden signs in 2020 has been almost dead quiet. So the PA Dems definitely lied about signs they couldn't keep up demand. In past talking to some canvas coordinators they said the campaign was being stingy with giving away too many signs. You know it makes me think about this past Monday where I volunteered to chauffeur people who came in from NYC to help canvas. A man I was talking to who volunteered his time to help organize coming from out of state said he hoped some people would take some of the signs that were still available. But I guess that's the thing, they were still available and trying to off set them. Driving some of the people around I was in more swingy parts of Lehigh Valley and they seemed shell shocked by the normalcy of Trump flags, banners, and multiple signs on people's lawns. So seeing more of those than Harris I should have just not gone on twitter and look for some hope. When I'd talk with multiple people over past couple months I seemed to be one of the rare cautious reads of the race. Anyway a lot of words to say it is all so very tragic and we haven't even begun what that will look like. What will begin in a few months that will reverberate for years. Biden was the death blow overall. I need a long break politically, cause the weight of the world without a pause will not help me in what I need to do and who I remain to be. 

I have seen the glory of the Selzer poll...where do the vibes go from here?

I have seen the glory of the Selzer poll...where do the vibes go from here?

trails of thought....

Well Harris finally heard my pleas & is coming for a rally tomorrow in Allentown just found out a couple hours ago. It's one up on Trump also. I will be driving around canvasers from out of state. Hope traffic be ok 🧐 

Also just got back being away and there is lots of new signs🧐

I don't know if I'm glad to be proven right on how the past couple years there has been signs of big business, wealthy elite vultures, the press, and tech overlords to push Trump on us. The last couple weeks it's never been clearer. 

There is a swell of signs in my area since was away, momentum is high and ground game is hard and the annihilator is running on his base being aggrieved to vote covering up his weaknesses. At least Harris campaign isn't taking anything for granted* the way Hillary did and even Biden in 2020. Our problems with a win are still ever present and deadly for humanity and all life on this fragile planet. But fucking let's at least not add this problem to the wreckage. 

Trying not to doom or have hopium though obsessed with libbing out last couple days seeing Iowa Selzer poll. Whatever happens let's keep the momentum to building a better world because the other side is hell bent on making a worse one.

* (update Dec. 18, 2024) Oh dear reader of course they did, not only in the post mortem articles but wasn't it obvious they would be making other inexcusable mistakes when they disgustingly ignored and basically spit on and told Muslim, Arabic and Palestinian voters to eat shit if they didn't get in line and vote for them. They emphasized this in Michigan of all places? Over a billion dollars blown. At least I don't have an embarrassing number of these kinds of posts, 90% was more of 'danger, danger' signals and expressions. 

"Now we are a 150 feet from the promised land."

I wanted the opportunity to feel was these people have in store for me. You can describe a megachurch or a Halloween haunted house but it is an entirely another thing to experience it in person. I wanted to feel the sensation of being submerged into listening to the people who are dictating a dark future and the people surrounding you eating it up, cheering it on. It was at capacity so I only got to stand in line for an hour. The crowd did feel like people anticipating a savior. And the man who blurted out as we moved up in the street "Now we are 150 feet  to the promised land," confirmed that. The photo is from when we were told no one else was being taken in and it was the end of the road. I admit I feel a lot of anger and disgust at his supporters at times but besides the well off and wealthy I mostly just felt sorry for them. Not that they are all being hoodwinked but that for anyone to look at what he is selling and be 'That's good! Sign me up!' What a waste. Life has to be mean more than that to you right?

I feel trapped in an existential and material battle as an artist in this time period. An era in the culture that wants to take artists down swiftly and expect them to put up no resistance or there will be bloodshed of these artists' livelihoods, dreams, hopes, prospects. You know what keeps artists going. The narrative getting shoved and pounded is that artists are inconvenient. As if artists never really meant anything and never have, the machines will take care of that now. Get back to work peasants, climate change debris ain't going to clean itself up. 

Those possibilities presented over ten years ago of the digital landscape are being stomped out I cannot believe how much I let myself miss. Yet once the ruling tech vultures and capitalists saw people were enjoying too much art, interesting thoughts, and connections, they couldn't let that continue. You can't connect ideas, art, and helpful back and forth supporting others out and informing them of ways to make the world better! They have money to make and they demand loyalty to all your time and attention working to make them more money asap. I think a very difficult thing in this moment is while artists have the strength of imagination to intellectually go Battle Royale against this disaster, I don't believe many have the actual willpower to fight fight.

The internet and social media needed to be monetized to death and made unusable and make everyone who inhabits these terrains feel bad and hopeless. There are a couple social media accounts I have that I am able to curate that escape this plight for now. I worry that the right will scorch and whittle away those sections of Instagram they have not infiltrated. The AIDS Memorial page still up is pretty amazing that is allowed with how things are being pushed. It's also more independent, alternative accounts. Like an internet version of those eclectic old thrift, vintage, book, odd and oddity shops that got pushed and gutted for gentrification. Also independent artists and creative people doing their talented thing, cutting past all the doomerism so they can make, live, share and connect. Generative AI is a house of cards but that will take awhile. Tech freaks aren't going to write themselves out of existence and funding.

There was a very good tweet awhile back of mentioning how convenient the machines can get the luxury of writing poetry.

@KarlreMarks

Humans doing the hard jobs on minimum wage while the robots write poetry and paint 

is not the future I wanted 

What are we even doing when reproductive rights isn't a red line, that it is acceptable to watch disappear and banned nationally and the people supporting Harris for this are labeled genocide enablers and psychopaths? People don't understand that this current form of the left of 2015-2024 (there is no manger just fracturing, tense and loose threads) is unsustainable and ready to break apart completely and fold onto itself. The irony poisoning, doom pilling, 'the liberals are the actual great evil,' any electoralism is just fascism apologia empire staning is not where people are in the real world and it just won't hold. People aren't looking to jump in or let political infighting into their already busy and chaotic lives. Now neither will people who don't want to be talked down to like everything is actually ok which I know people get turned off by everything is great actually and stop complaining Dem messaging optics.

Yet you are not a coward caring for other rights eroded here and voting cause of that, voting cause you don't want Trump back in is not weak shit. Saying he's not going to be worse certainly is though. Did you fall on your head and get amnesia? Whatever is in these politician's hearts or not it doesn't matter only ground movement and its influence matters. Then people say well it will just be swallowed, defanged and co-opted and sure there is risks but if the risk ain't any form of power or influence than what are we even doing? Just hanging out in the twitter drafts and dog piling. When women who you need to help run these movements are busy bleeding out on the floor your going to tell them that was their noble sacrifice? Some women are going to say that to themselves? The worst is seeing women talk like reproductive rights ain't shit to fight or vote for. Hello people this is the coalition issue of our time, organize.

Incredibly dark and dangerous for the left/progressives to be so divided and organizer types publicly feuding and dog piling on decaying platform run by a nazi. Saw a leftists tweet about how he wasn't voting because of Gaza yet saying how he didn't feel abortion was so important in contrast to the genocide in Gaza!!??? OPEN THE SCHOOLS!!! (Yet I'm not surprised seeing some leftist men doing this. In a separate tweet incident a prominent enough writer in these circles I like who talked about working for abortion rights in past says Gaza is his red line also) And I'm telling you it needs to be studied how liberal and/or moderate men are being more helpful on reproductive rights seeing it as a non negotiable. I'm sorry I say this as a die hard lefty but I see it online, is it that I'm too online? These are not bots but at least CHAT GPT would understand the consequences. 

What was worse a woman in the first tweet example was agreeing with him that abortion and reproductive rights that it felt so small and inconsequential for a hypothetical ????

I thought man we are so cooked. 

That we weren't out in the streets after Roe was taken away with general strike calls is one of the greatest failures of missed political call to actions in the 21st century. Was talking to a woman recently about this and she was baffled emotionally of the lack of organizational response in mass protest, but then thought out loud maybe it was a better grown up decision because of other failed long term mass protests but I said no it's ok to admit that this was a massive failure and she agreed.

There was one group who had more militant protest actions in the beginning after Roe was struck down, but one member of it had a lot of odd controversy and the group was disavowed swiftly and publicly by multiple orgs. Yet nobody did any kind of militant action again. It's unforgivable. 

 

 

It's eerie politically being back in my bellwether corner of PA. I've recently learned I despise living in a place that is a harbinger of elections. Driving to get pizza last night a whole long stretch of houses that had all Biden and anti Trump signs four years ago have nothing on the lawns. Now they are political ghost towns. There's only a handful of weeks left so it would be hard to see that changing suddenly. Was that even true that requests for Harris-Walz signs were flying out the doors that they couldn't keep the orders up? Is everyone just so fucking exhausted and burnt out they don't have that kind of energy to put up a sign? Biden and the Democrats burned a lot of goodwill with telling people everything was fine and getting back on track and stop complaining. Harris has...I wish it were Walz. That is a person made for the moment. With Harris it's similar to Biden in 2020. He just found himself there in this place unfortunately winning the nominee. Many people wondered if he understood the complexities of the moment and challenges because he was so overly and naively optimistic in an egotistical way. He was a political creature of another time. Harris just gave Trump a political ad gift with a stupid gaffe saying there is nothing she would have broken with Biden with on The View (???) and also some other nonsense on Colbert. She is not hated like Hillary but she flounders trying to define herself. But we were suppose to whistle past the graveyard carrying Biden’s corpse? Getting in the other night there was large Harris billboard that made me feel good and some houses I saw in the dark have new Harris-Walz signs yet other houses have new Trump signs. Two creepy ‘Pennsylvania is Trump country’ signs on the roadway. I hate being in this moment and I hate being here in this moment. And yet I am still going to canvas this weekend. I feel I cannot stand back even if the worst is to happen even if the eeriness is settling in. I can’t live with myself to be a coward and tune out. Nor let myself be stewing in my house, cowering, afraid of what these people have in store for us. Yet on the other hand a place in Wales cut off from all this disappointment and political malpractice would be lovely.

Do countries matter more than human lives? That is the real question of Israel and Palestine. The rest is a smoke screen.

"Is that all there is, it that all there is my friend? Then let's break out the booze and have a ball if that's all there is."

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/kamala-harris-presidential-campaign-became-a-grim-slog.html

I was always fearful how consequential Biden would end up being if he were the nominee and you are seeing that play out. 

"And it looks like we might have made it. Yes, it looks like we've made it to the end."

https://archive.is/8Rt9b (to bypass paywall)

I thought Harris had overcome her bad political instincts but first impressions I never forget because they always reveal themselves again and again and again.

"But what they do have is a hegemonic liberalism that will get us all fucking killed."

And yet, what I'm suppose to lay down and die and give up? I could but I won't.

I'm canvasing still...and why I am fighting is to stop more disaster and hemorrhaging because it still fucking matters. Read some blurb by a prominent hetro dox type academic art world actor I have weariness of. He said to not really care about politics. Yes, a man who will never find himself in a position to be forced into giving birth. To be forced to give birth to the man who raped them and to be forever tethered and terrorized by him. Nor be on the receiving end of race riots and anti immigrant purges. Neither a man who will be a part of those who will be regular protesters and political dissidents that will be targeted. With the goal to round them up and brought to black ops sites to be tortured and/or disappeared. A man not personally affected by anti LGBTQ rage and risk living as criminalized. Nor be a person at risk to die of an overdose in their grandparent's home because they cannot afford rent or healthcare and never got out of their family lineage of poverty and desolation. So no I will not take political real world advice from art academic men who say to be above politics. Thanks stay in your lane I guess.

So the October Surprise is helping Israel carry a war and a genocide out across multiple countries in the Middle East that also includes Iran. I knew how much Biden would absolutely fuck this up when October 7th happened. I remember vividly the dread I felt watching the news and thinking of not just the mass destruction and collective punishment of Palestinian lives that would occur, but selfishly (I’ll admit that) Biden helping to cost us the election. With his ghoulish and evil foreign policy advisors in tow of course. 

Biden’s disastrous campaign people coupled with Obama luminaries…we almost could have made it, I believe we could have. I think I have mentally resigned. Yet I have been prepared for everything since pre election night 2016. I never believed that Trump would just go away. Jan. 6th was the least surprising thing. I think what surprised me was how much Jan. 6th doesn’t matter to people. That’s eerie and I am not a patriotic person in the slightest. I will never put country over people. Nation states are never more important than human lives. So even with that I was disturbed. Eight or nine people died connected directly to that day and they are people in the GOP involved in the plotting who are still there working in the government. I know in some countries this kind of corruption is very normal but it’s new to me and I would like to not be desensitized. I know a large number of the public are desensitized to him but I will never allow myself to be.

Been pretty good at mostly avoiding politics for a week however it's still unnerving, in almost month you know? Eight years still the same political stranglehold again hoping you get out this time, right? The momentum of Obama could never be matched because of the unique set time, circumstances and conditions in the culture and the political climate. Who Obama was also could not be ever replicated either. Yet you felt the synergy (or could at least observe it), it was exciting, it was building, and then the speech and after has never felt the same. 

I canvas, talk to others who organize and canvas but I feel I am the only one more cautious besides one other person. I observe a lot of different fractions of people on social media and that gives me caution also. I watch around my area signs, flags, banners, stickers, shirts, and I feel unease. When I go back if I don't see more Harris signs up I think I might just go into some resignation even if I'll still canvas. I went up to an older white man in the CVS parking lot over a week ago to let him know I liked his Harris Walz cameo hat. I asked him how he has been feeling and he surprised me responding  ‘you can’t help but feel optimistic now.’ I apologized and said I guess I’m more of a cynic but I said the boat has oars again which he appreciated. I can’t believe this will be the third election and there is still a question. 2016 I thought he could very well win I fretted on and off since he came down on the escalator. 2020 I went back and forth but I held a lot more caution and doubt until nearing the end. This time I don't know honestly. His support never seems to abate, people want to continue the reality show, the pain dial must be kept on high.

I went to see Walz speak and for hours there was a truck with Trump flags protesting up and down the street. When we got out of the rally the truck was joined by three other cars. People crossing the street flipped them off and cursed at them while they beeped their horns proudly. Imagine committing hours to this on a beautiful day? It’s religion to these people. To them Trump is some form of divine intervention. I just want to know how should I proceed through the years because even if he loses it will be another election he didn’t lose and I believe he still has people who would die storming the capitol for him all over again.

I’m sorry people hate this kind of language and sentiments but there are a segment of people who love Trump that would be willing to hunt us (the liberal/left/anti-Trump) for sport and I refuse to not admit that. Though a larger fanbase of his will watch you get dragged off, beaten and disappeared because you are the enemy now. They’ll say ‘so and so were ok but they should have kept their mouth shut’ and go back to scrolling angrily at their phones. He's promoting a literal framework that was a nazi purge what the fuck do some of you think is going on? 

Ah the Donald Trump Democrat in NYC who I suspected his whole administration would be one carnival caravan of corruption event after another has gotten indicted. Love when bad things happen of this manner to bad people who hold higher power and authority over the average citizen 😍

Israel detonating people in coordinated mass attack is now business as usual. It's difficult or impossible to see that the world was not turned into something evil and dark that can't be put back yesterday. Everyone in the future could be possibly detonated randomly because governments and private corporations deem it a necessity. The chorus of people saying 'well don't be a bad person and you have nothing to worry about!' have no clue. The bodies and souls Israel and the US is allowing to be altered and destroyed is a turn in the 21st century. We are still a post 9/11 world and perhaps always will be. How succinct Thompson was when he wrote: The last half of the 20th century will seem like a wild party for rich kids, compared to what's coming now. The party's over, folks. 

MSNBC historians quiet over this when it comes to deconstructing and forewarning authoritarianism. One prominent writer in those circles but not on the circuit who used to write about real things on the ground and the impossible and hope, selfish silence is angering. *You can’t claim to love and despair over what is happening to the environment and not condemn the environmental implications of Gaza’s genocide and the US’s thumbs up of it. All of these people were also not surprisingly Biden dead enders who had us circling the drain for a while. We are all sitting ducks while you keep sipping your coffee, plug and vent on twitter and get your TV slots, columns, fellowships, book deals and panels. Can't they see a possible "October Surprise" to get Trump over the finish line coming out of this? 

* (updated note Oct. 25, 2024, I did see they actually are now speaking and posting others suffering in Gaza. Randomly came across form a person I follow responding to them on twitter. I don't know if it's new I had seen for awhile it had been quiet but want to amend that they actually do care and that matters and matters to correct, but I will leave it up as it is a reflection of my own thoughts at the time as a diary entry of sorts. 

Well I mean, they have nothing in terms of an argument or a coherent worldview or a useful praxis but what they do have is they are speaking on behalf of a hegemonic liberalism that's going to get us all fucking killed. I agree, don't talk to them, but because they're a distraction from the real fucking problem, which is that fascism arises from the collapse of institutional legitimacy of liberal institutions.

That's how we got fucking Trump, that's how we get what's coming next after him that's gonna be even worse. Because if you think there's not gonna be more ecological and economic catastrophes in the future that liberalism is wholly unequipped to deal with, and that that failure isn't gonna lead to fascism filling that fucking hole, then you've got another thing coming.

And that's what these guys are, these guys that marched in Charlottesville, these are the people who are aware of the unspoken premise of this sort of zombie neoliberalism that we're living in, which is that we're coming to a point where there's gonna be ecological catastrophe, and that it's gonna require either massive redistribution of the ill-gotten gains of the first world, or genocide.

And these are the first people who have basically said, "Well if that's the choice, then I choose genocide", and they're getting everyone else ready, intellectually and emotionally, for why that's gonna be okay when it happens, why they're not really people. When we're putting all this money into more fucking walls and drones and bombs and guns to keep them away, so that we can watch them die with clear consciences, it's because we've been loaded with the ideology that these guys are now starting to express publicly.

On the other side of them, we have people who are saying in full fucking voice, "No, we have the resources to save everybody, to give everybody a decent and worthwhile existence, and that is what we want." And that is the fucking real difference between these two, and you can tell that to the next asshole who tells you that they're actually two sides of the same coin.

Matt Christman from Chapo on post Charlottesville episode, 8.17.20217, that I think of always all this time later. The fears from past that became the vision of the future.

When I went to canvas today is when I heard that once again the vortex of violence that surrounds Trump ricochetted back around. The nazi running twitter posted why is no one trying to assassinate Biden/Harris. Had my first nasty direct one on one encounter canvassing but out of a 100 people not surprised knew would occur sooner or later. An entitled older white woman who is definitely looking to vote for the annihilator to stomp all over your rights in this upcoming election and onward. Besides that was pretty decent shift. Her look of a disbelief kind of anger painted on was memorable because I can't imagine living with that kind of rage and fear everyday. A paranoia that changes anything open, sincere, and humbling about you. Fervent. Vengeful. Self righteousness. Persistent. Aren't you just tired already? Isn't it exhausting? Yet it sustains them, keeps them going. Nourishes and saves them. Trump is not merely politics it's devout religion. The dissidents are all anxious at the altar once again of another election waiting for what will happen. 

I'm the only one who is more cautious besides another canvas coordinator I talked to a couple weeks back. Even if he loses some times it feels like in important ways he has won, something has shifted sharply and deeply in the last nine years. And even if Trump loses the problems run deeper. That this is his third election running, the 'it's going to be close' messaging, don't people see how much a problem there still is? There are tens of millions of people who don't believe he lost, who don't care about Jan. 6th, who will follow him off a cliff and push their family and friends off it as well just to have him be king. I remember when Biden was first elected there was an article asking 'Will this be the age of the Biden Republican?' because they were basing it off the old 'Reagan Democrat.' I never felt that and the politics of those time periods were not comparable. How much did someone get paid for that? Every political writer dreams to be the oracle. 

I wonder if I could know in advance would I want to, probably be tempting, at this point maybe. Was hoping to be in a physical state of not being reachable during the election night yet...circumstances you can't do anything about. The past few years plans past a month out feel like a cruel joke and dreams and hopes are things you keep their temperatures mild and tepid to not get carried away. That has been the big change in me that feels permanent. I don't think of the future as a given or guarantee, a reality to get attached to, to get rushed with excitement with. Art ideas are the one exception and some times even then I feel a disconnect and anxiety. Yet taking things day by day is its own death of a small and thousand dull cuts. 

We'll never make it out of this world alive, so what is there in the mean time.

The blood libel against Haitian immigrants sprinting from online to real life consequences has Satanic Panic vibes and the 2016 clown sighting panic cobbled together in a fascist trench coat. In my opinion this also has the scent of being pre manufactured talking point. As taking racist bullshit on the internet and passing it around the right wing outrage social media personalities and news outlets to catch on. I don't think anyone expected the Stephen King clown to do well against an experienced prosecutor so they needed a distraction in case it brought momentum toward Harris and it even is in battle with Taylor's endorsement news cycling. The UK race riots a month back were a sort of a preview for what can likely happen here very soon that goes beyond who wins or loses in November. Can we ever win when the other side is intent on crushing us all and the Democrats have decided maybe we can compromise? 

I'm so exhausted but I see signs, flags, t-shirts, bumper stickers and it feels they are just getting started. That we will be sport soon enough. I spotted an older white man wearing "We the People, Means Everyone" down my street today and I literally parked as fast as could to get out of my car and tell him I really liked his shirt. That was nice recognition. I have no idea why politics like this makes me so outgoing and my social anxiety falls away from my usual wanting to hide. I think because this is too important and I want to tap people in 'I'm here to support you' to not be alone nor afraid, even if I am, we are here. We live here too. This is our place also. Stop making us feel we have to be afraid and tremble, as if you deserve all the respect. We are not going anywhere.

We are At War now, according to President Bush, and I take him at his word. He also says this War might last for "a very long time."

Generals and military scholars will tell you that eight or 10 years is actually not such a long time in the span of human history -- which is no doubt true -- but history also tells us that 10 years of martial law and a war-time economy are going to feel like a Lifetime to people who are in their twenties today. The poor bastards of what will forever be known as Generation Z are doomed to be the first generation of Americans who will grow up with a lower standard of living than their parents enjoyed.

That is extremely heavy news, and it will take a while for it to sink in. The 22 babies born in New York City while the World Trade Center burned will never know what they missed. The last half of the 20th century will seem like a wild party for rich kids, compared to what's coming now. The party's over, folks.

- Hunter S. Thompson "When war drums roll" September 17, 2001

The horror of foresight. The tragedy of prophecy.